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How Well Does Windows Cluster?
cascadefx asks: "I work for a mid-sized mid-western university. One of our departments has started up a small Beowulf cluster research project that he hopes to grow over time. At the moment, the thing is incredibly weak... but it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems. It runs Linux and works, it is just not anything to write home about. Here's the problem: my understanding is that an MS rep asked what it would take to get them to switch to a Microsoft cluster. Is this possible? Are there MS clusters that do what Beowulf clusters are capable of? I thought MS clusters were for load balancing, not computation... which is the hoped-for goal of this project. Can the Slashdot crowd offer some advice? If there are MS clusters, comparisons of the capabilities would be welcome." One has to only go as far as Microsoft's site to see its current attempt at clustering, but what is the real story. Have any of you had a chance to pit a Linux Beowulf cluster against one from Microsoft? How did they compare?
From what I understand from reading Win 2k Advanced Server's help section on Windows clustering, it is mostly for stability. Kind of like a massive mirror raid system. I really don't see any performance advantage if you're looking for supercomputer speeds, unless your measure performance by uptime. As a side note, what were you using for clustering? I'm currently doing a cluster using mosix for my school and it seems to be going nice. I'm just curious as to what gives the best speed performance on the linux end.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
A beowulf cluster is not limited to Linux, it could run on top of any OS. I believe NASA did the original design work to be OS agnostic.
http://www.windowsclusters.org/projects.htm gives a list of current Windows clusters.
Finally, are you out of your tiny little mind? I wonder why M$ is so keen to help. There is no such thing as a free lunch, espically from M$.
My managers will only buy windows products as they have a site liscense with MS. They are looking into Linux a little bit because of the Terminal server w/ load balancing does not load balance and the clusterd computers do not talk to each other. The profiles on the 3 clusterd servers do not update each other at all. This was much better than the last attempt my boss did using an IBM pre configured configured box the whole cluster got a BSOD and corrupted a drive losing data for 3 days. People were not happy.
I can only hope MS's poor performance will make them switch.
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
Windows clustering works as advertised for the most part, but is expensive. Some exceptions include heavily loaded machine pulling from fiber channel arrays and NAS. Both of the network attached devices seem to have some problems. Driver issues? Don't know.
Haven't seen the reported "bsod round table" where one machine crashes, shortly followed by another and another. The problems we have seen is a single machine bsods, and the other machines in the cluster don't realize it's down.
If your already in the MS camp, it will work, it look at other solutions. I think they will be more cost effective.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
While I haven't been near a Microsoft Cluster in a while, I do remember a couple of things that really stand out about them:
The number of systems able to be part of the cluster is severely limited. At the time, it was limited to 2, but I'm pretty sure that has increased to a somewhat larger single digit number.
The number of applications available to run on the cluster is just as severely limited. Again at the time, there were exactly zero applications, but I know that there is at least one (Exchange) now.
Given the limitations of what uses you can put an MS cluster to, I wouldn't bother with it in the first place.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
XP barely functions on a Tualatin Pentium III. I wouldn't bring it anywhere near my P2....
/Brian
Years ago, I worked at an ISP that ran partly on Solaris, mostly on Linux. A few MS reps came in to try and get us to switch to NT. We let them go through their routine, then walked them around the operations room, telling them the capabilities of what we had, and asking if NT would match them. The response was repetetively "no". When we pressed them on a few issues, they gave in rather easily. When we asked them why you couldn't bind another IP to an ethernet card under NT without a reboot, they admitted "lazy programming."
So, take the MS reps through the operation, tell them the capabilities. Ask them if they can meet or exceed them. If they say "Yes", you're either not using the real capabilities of your Linux machines, or they're lying.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
It's a .gov so they have to use some contract we already have with IBM hardware and the MS site liscense. The director of my department is a big MS fan (even after he upgraded to XP on his laptop and corrupted the drive). I hope to be moving to a different department tho where I can possibly run linux on my desktop pc.
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
Then, point out the scads of Beowulf clusters and Linux/Unix based systems.
Finally, inform the rep and your management that you've chosen to use the more cost effective, higher performance and standardized choice...Unix.
If management resists further, do a cost analysis. That'll convince them.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
...to ask a question that I wanted to ask as well. Granted, this topic seems a little strange, considering the Linux cluster is in place, and it seems like the kind of question which encourages a Microsoft vs. Linux world domination showdown for grandmaster of the universe. It also shows a limited business sense on the part of the poster (why change something that works well when you can't afford a replacement?).
Right now a coworker and I are looking at pricing and configuring a fault-tolerant cluster for a client who runs Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000. They're a bit paranoid, so they've decided they want a cluster. We've tried to educate them on exactly what a Microsoft cluster can and can't do, so it's difficult to understand exactly what they want (basically an entire network exactly like Microsoft's own, but for $1000).
Pricing on a two system cluster is around $50,000. Buying two copies of Exchange and Windows Advanced Server will total $20,000. Then there's the hardware costs. For our client, they've specifically requested this, so they're ready to pay.
My question to Whamo is are they really taking the Microsoft rep seriously? If they have to pay software costs for their new cluster that's going to mean two things: either buying less CPUs to add to the cluster, or not doing the project at all, because just the software will put them over budget. With Advanced Server running somewhere around $4000 that's a lot per machine when Linux costs at most $5 to burn a CD after downloading it via the university's T1/T3/etc. Whamo says "it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems" and to me that is your answer. If you can't afford the hardware you can't afford to buy Microsoft's software...
Also, there's MOSIX as well, but I don't have much experience with MOSIX and thus cannot comment on it.
Microsoft usually will you give you the os for free if you're a decent sized business. Especially if you're considering going linux instead. (And yes, it has happened to me unfortunately). Its kind of like that crack dealer telling you the first hit is for free.
Ugh. I am putting together a win2k cluster at my job, and I have their computational clustering technological preview. For the most part it's a MS marketing scam (Here build a cluster on these trial versions of win2k, and check out our awesome Visual C++. Oh and here're some old versions of the stuff you really need to build a cluster.) It's not really that great IMHO. All you really need is MPI and a bunch of windows boxes. MS likes to push the proprietary MPI Pro from MPI Software Technology.
The AC3 folks at cornell have done quite a bit with these windows clusters. I guess the parallel Matlab is pretty nifty, but there's no reason any of this stuff couldn't be done on a more mature platform.
Personally, my biggest turnoff is the fact that you need KVM switches wired up to each node...well that and the overhead of running the bloatware that is win2k. Compared to a 256 node headless linux cluster we built this just sucks. Hard.
1. Universities already get this from Microsoft all the time.
2. This is a given, except when closed source would be revealed publicly (which is also a given).
3. The very idea is ridiculous.
4. Pretty much a given as well (free, that is).